Rant of the Day: Can't get Leonard Cohen tickets via Ticketmaster

Our rant of the day today comes from Alec Saunders, who’s upset about not being able to buy tickets for the Leonard Cohen show at the National Arts Centre: **

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That TicketMaster has a monopoly on the sale of event tickets in North America is not in dispute. Now that they have achieved that monopoly, however, how should they behave? Case in point, my own attempts to buy tickets for Leonard Cohen’s Ottawa show on May 25 / 26. After advertising all last week that the tickets would go on sale at 10:00 AM today, not a ticket was available by 10:03. It’s inconceivable that all 4,800 seats sold out in 3 minutes. Inconceivable.

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The venue for the show is Canada’s National Arts Center – a tax payer subsidized facility constructed in the 1960’s to showcase Canadian art. A Canadian artist is coming to play the venue. No tickets are available to Canadian fans, except via US scalpers. It’s offensive.

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[
 Read the entire post...
](http://saunderslog.com/2009/03/02/time-to-break-ticketmaster%E2%80%99s-monopoly/)

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** Related: ** Ottawa Entertainment Guide